“It started when I was a teenager looking for a band or an artist destroying all the limits of music, a band able to bring what all the boring mainstream bands could not bring…”
When most musicians claim to be breaking boundaries, it’s hard not to feel a little sceptical. But French maniacs Igorrr are not like other bands and founder, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind Gautier Serre is definitely not like other musicians. Ostensibly lurking on the fringes of the tech-metal scene, Igorrr’s music smashes extreme metal, baroque opera, glitchy breakbeat electronica and traditional Balkan music together in a riotous explosion of jarring contrasts and neck-snapping dynamics.
Demonstrating a laudable lack of interest in pursuing more orthodox methods, new album Savage Sinusoid is arguably the most extreme, unpredictable and demented thing Gautier has produced to date.
“I was trying to push the quality of the music, so I chose to have many guest musicians on this album instead of playing all the parts myself,” says Gautier. “A guy who spent his entire life playing accordion or a classical guitar will play the track a way better than I could’ve done. So I picked up the best instrumentalists I knew, all specialists in their own style, and I recorded them at my studio. But there were some logistical issues. Bringing a 17th-century harpsichord from the Czech Republic to the French countryside takes some organisation!”
Although a studio-based project until recently, Igorrr has steadily morphed into a fully operable live entity. Gautier and his eclectic line-up made an appearance at UK Tech-Fest earlier this month and fans of the brutal and esoteric lost their minds, something Gautier is used to…
“I remember a guy smashing his head on the wall during a gig in eastern Europe once,” he recalls with a chuckle. “Also, after I released My Chicken Symphony – a musical piece which is basically [the sound of] my chicken eating seeds I put on the mini piano, and then I composed the arrangement around the music she wrote – some guys were actually playing a cover of this track! Playing a cover of a track composed by a chicken? That’s awesome.”
Sounds like: Truly unhinged electro- metal-trip-hop(era)-core.
For fans of: Mr. Bungle, The Algorithm, Destrage
Listen to: Houmous
Savage Sinusoid is out now via Metal Blade
The 90s issue: Your definitive guide to the craziest decade in metal
